Empty Canadian Promises

No single state disputes that Canada owns the waters between the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and its northern borders, including the Northwest Passage. However, the United States insists that within Canadian internal waters runs an international strait, the Northwest Passage.  Meanwhile, the Russians, who have no problem acknowledging that the Northwest Passage is part of Canadian internal waters, have an ongoing territorial interest in Canada's Arctic: Russia is currently mapping a section of the Arctic seabed that could conflict with Canadian claims in the Arctic.  It is in Canada’s national interest to claim as large a portion of the seabed as possible and to legally assert that the Northwest Passage is not an international strait. This would allow Canada to maintain sovereignty and legal authority in the Northwest Passage while maximizing potential natural resource reserves. In addition, foreign ships running close to the Canadian coast would pose a significant hazard to Canada from an environmental as well as national security standpoint. If the Northwest Passage were recognized as an international strait aircraft would have the right of overflight in the region, opening Canada up to a host of other problems including air pollution, remote search and rescue and radar monitoring of flights.

Canadian public policy has long failed to live up to legislative pledges to increase Canadian Arctic operational capability and assert effective sovereignty in the region. The country's claims in the Arctic region originate in British claims first made by John Cabot when he landed off the coast of Labrador, Newfoundland in 1497 and further cemented during Martin Frobisher's sixteenth century voyages to the Canadian Arctic, in particular Baffin Island. Since Canada inherited its Arctic territories from Britain, it can trace sovereignty in the region further back than any other Arctic state.

In spite of this, Canada has frequently failed to enforce its legal rule in the region. For instance, when the United States built the Alaskan highway, which cuts through Canadian territory, the US government simply asked to do so and was granted permission. In addition, much of Canadian Arctic territory, including the Northwest Passage, was discovered by men who were not Canadian (or British). Canada has frequently failed to demonstrate an ongoing claim in the form of legal rule by, for instance, failing to establish post offices, courts and other government outposts, thus further weakening its claims to remote regions of the Arctic. During the Klondike gold rush, Canadians actually composed a minority of the population in the Yukon; however, there was no serious threat to Canadian control of the region at the time as the Canadians maintained a paradoxically large police presence in the few heavily population areas.

Around the time of World War I, any threat to Canadian sovereignty and security in the Arctic was considered unlikely. No nation could quickly mobilize across the Arctic ice and the icebound region was of little importance, economic or political, to either the Canadian government or to other nations. Mounted patrols in the region provided a Canadian presence and all the proof of sovereignty Canada felt it needed. Between World War I and World War II, Canada focused on maintaining national unity; the United States, through President Roosevelt, gave assurance that it would intervene should a foreign power threaten Canadian soil. Any threat to Canada from the North was also considered a threat to the United States and would be treated by such.

By 1942, the United States convinced Canada to support the Alaska Highway, which provided an overland link between Alaska and the United States. The Alaska Highway provided the United States with insurance should Japanese submarines close off the sea route connecting the continental United States to Alaska. Also in 1942, a pipeline connecting the United States to the Norman Wells oil field in Alaska was laid through Canada. In all, more than 40,000 troops and United States and Canadian civilians operated in the Northwest Territories during World War II without any oversight whatsoever from the Canadian government.  Finally, in 1943 Canada began to negotiate agreements to buy back American projects in the North and Americans agreed to withdraw from the region after the war while giving up on plans for additional roads and air-staging routes.  Luckily for the Canadians, the United States has always viewed Canada's terrestrial Far North as a strategic front rather than an area the United States would like to assert sovereignty over. Therefore, there has always been mutually agreeable dialogue on the issue of terrestrial sovereignty.

On the sea, however, the United States has been the most direct challenger of Canadian sovereignty. The 1969-70 voyage of the US tanker Manhattan through the Northwest Passage and the later 1985 voyage of the US icebreaker Polar Sea in particular touched off debate about whether the Northwest Passage is, as the United States maintains, an international strait, or if it is instead part of Canadian internal waters. Today, Canada has made clear that it thinks it is in the Canadian national interest to assert de jure rule over the Northwest Passage, extending the rule of its maritime law over the Northwest Passage beyond the scope of what is laid out by international law. Canada has likewise extended its claims in the region by abandoning the legally ill-supported sector theory in favor of straight baselines to delineate claims to internal waters in the Far North, extending sovereignty over, for instance, the waters between the islands of the Arctic Archipelago.

Despite these increased legislative efforts to assert sovereignty in the Arctic, however, Canada today has extremely limited operational capacity in the Arctic. Its icebreaker fleet is old and incapable of projecting a military presence in the region. A 1985 promise by the conservative Mulroney government to build a Polar Class 8 icebreaker, which at the time would have been the largest in the world, was budgeted just half of the real dollars needed and eventually the idea was scrapped. While Canadian policymakers say they are committed to protecting and mapping Canadian claims within the region, due by 2013 under UNCLOS, the reality is that Canada's fiscal commitment to implementing policies has consistently lagged. Today, although Canada has the second-longest continuous Arctic coastline, the country has only one large and four medium-sized icebreakers.  None of these icebreakers are nuclear and therefore all have not only limited operational capabilities but also limited range. Canada should, therefore, recognize that it will need help from other nations, such as the United States, in order to enforce environmental regulations, project force in the region and ensure national security at its northern border. Neglecting to do so will allow the Russians, with a fleet of heavy nuclear icebreakers, to operate at will in the northern Arctic Ocean, which Canada's icebreaker fleet is incapable of penetrating between November and May. Canada’s current commitment to building eight light class Arctic vessels at a 25-year build and operating cost of $4.3 billion will not allow the country to effectively assert sovereignty in the Arctic.

In addition, Canada must work with non-state actors, such as corporations, to build the infrastructure that will be necessary to transport gas, oil and seabed minerals out of the region as the Arctic region melts. Doing so will be a boon to Canada's northern economy, generate government revenue through revenue sharing, taxes and the sale of leases and help to defray some of the costs associated with building this infrastructure. Working in coordination with other actors will also allow Canada to maintain better oversight of northern operations, create and enforce environmental regulations more effectively and do a better job of making sure the government gets a share of the revenue generated by natural resource extraction in the Arctic.